The Monster Speaks

A little, old tyrant who lives in a tower and chortles over his gold, invited a few writers up to grace them with his rarely heard insight and wisdom. Reading the reports of that meeting made all the demons I’ve pretended not to notice, flood out like an opened Ghost Busters trap. The disheartening excuses for failure and the promises of maintaining the current staff, make a Bengals fan want to shop for a new team.

The excuse this miserly scrooge coughed up for the immense failures of 2008, was, predictably, Carson Palmer’s injured elbow:

“This thing would take a quantum leap forward if we just had Carson Palmer back on the field playing the way he can play. We built our team with the assumption that he would be out there as our quarterback.”

There are so many things wrong with this statement, it’s hard to find a starting point.

First off, a well balanced team can survive an injury to even their best player. Secondly, the Bengals have relied on an obsolete passing game for a while now, that had shown its struggles in the last half of the 2007 season. Palmer came into the year with no health concerns and showed us a clumsy offense who looked determined to set a franchise record for punts in a season. This organization can no longer hide it’s ineptitude behind Carson’s greatness because he isn’t great. He once looked it, but that was when the Bengals caught the league by surprise which has since then completely worn off. Guys, wearing the divisional champs shirt from three years ago just isn’t cool anymore - it’s like being stuck in the ‘80s.

Next, the writers asked the tyrant about the job security of the current coaching staff:

“I'm not going to say anything other than they are the same people that have been here for years now and they've been good years and years that weren't so good. But they're the same. They coach the same. They're teachers. They do their jobs as teachers, the same as they did before this year. I don't criticize them for how they teach.”

The sameness is the problem. Perhaps their teaching methods can remain the same, but the content must fluidly adapt to the current trends of the NFL. Innovation makes great coaches, not drills and practices. Any dumbbell can coach, but it’s the non-traditional that go down in history. The tyrant is telling the world how good years and bad years are the same in his mind. How the seasons go by, sometimes we win games, mostly we lose them, but the profit margin stays mostly the same. That’s unfortunately the only sameness that matters to him.

And Marvin?:

“In many ways he's done an incredibly good job. Our players still try hard and that's hard to come by when you go through all the losing this team has gone through. But he has them out there trying to the best of their abilities. At least in my eye. And on this point my eye counts.”

Do you see the standards this man has for his employees? Just try. It doesn’t matter what happens, just try. Try to make it to practice, try out last week’s game plan and if you’re up to it, try to get a win Sunday. No big whoop either way.

The writers couldn’t bear anymore of this nonsense, so they asked about a player everyone likes, T.J. Houshmandzedah:

“He's a tremendous competitor. He's the one player that has played to his previous level this year. We've talked with his people but haven't been able to reach ground that both of us accepted. It's going to be a question of money and we'll find out in the off-season if it's a deal we can make or not.”

That doesn’t sound hopeful. But if we can’t make a deal, we could always franchise tag him right?

“I don't want to get into what we're going to do there yet. That's something we don't have to decide on for a couple of months. In all honesty we haven't focused on it or made a decision on it.”

Haven’t focused on it? What have you been focusing on...the season? After Sunday our record should be 1-11-1. Our record will look like an X-Wing! Is that what all this focus leads to? An X-Wing? Aaagghh!!!

Colts 78, Bengals 6

Mojokong - done gone mad.